Basics - Texas hold'em

Bored of the "main stream" poker games! Then you have come to the right place. 

"Pre-lockdown" I played every week in my local pub in the Red Tooth league. Having had 4 players go to Vegas after winning the regional finals the standard was quite good. After the knock out round we would play "cash". This developed into "dealers choice" to give it a bit of variety. Basically when it comes round to your turn to be dealer you can specify the game. After playing the well known games we developed our own "West End Rules" games. 

I seem to had a natural ability to come up with a new game each week, leading to someone shouting out each time I entered the pub, "have you got anything from the shed for us this week". Well I thought is was time I shared these games and left them for posterity.

Be careful, many have come to the pub and tried to master these games, and many have failed.

But first today I'm explaining the rules of the most popular (currently) Poker game in the UK Texas Hold'em.

There are many books about Hold'em explaining the intricacies of how to play and conventions. However this blog is about New, if not uniquely new games of poker so the summary below is just a "starter guide" on how to play Texas Hold'em as a lot of the NEW games will require you to be fully conversant in how to play Texas Hold'em and Omaha (see post 2).

Basic Texas Hold'em rules

1. Every player is dealt 2 cards
2. Left of dealer (small blind) has to place a bet
3. Left of small blind (big blind) has to bet twice the bet of the small blind . for example if the small blind in 10 chips the big blind would be 20 chips.
   
4. The player next to the big blind has the option of:
1. "folding" i.e. giving up on this hand and handing their cards back to the dealer
2. "calling" which is to matching the bet of the big blind or
3. "raising" increasing the bet.
5. The next player has the same options to do the same and so on until it gets to the small blind
6. The small blind has the same options but if they fold they loose their "small blind"
   
7. If no one has increased the bet the big blind can either:
1. "check" do nothing or.
2. "Raise" as above.
8. If the bet has not raised above the initial big blind amount the betting stops.
9. If it has raised they (the big blind) have to "call" or "fold" or "raise".
10. Betting goes round the table until every player has bet the same amount.
11. 3 cards are dealt face up into the centre. This is called the flop.
    
12. A round of betting takes place starting left of the dealer as above, except each player can "check" assuming no one has already bet in that round.
13.  One more card is dealt face up. This is called the turn.
14. A round of betting takes place starting left of the dealer as per the flop.
15. A final card is dealt face up. This is called the river.
16. A round of betting takes place starting left of the dealer as per the Turn.
    
17. Players turn their cards over and the best hand wins.
18. Players make the best 5 card hand they can using ANY of the 5 cards in the middle and / or the 2 cards in their hand. i.e. 5 from 7
    
19. In many games players will fold before the end, leaving just one player, who is the winner.
20. List of winning hands can be found on "tinternet"
    

 Again this is only a very basic over view, if you can play "bog standard / plain vanilla" Texas Hold'em you will need to look at one of my later posts with the new games.